A CEO is not a leader unless he can think beyond the balance sheet. Leadership is related to team growth, which may also cater to the bottom line. A leader is a mentor, while a chief executive is a taskmaster. The combination of the two is an entrepreneur. However, for short term gains, it is not advisable to invest in an enterprise. Enterprises seek to meet a need, while businesses often tend to look at generating year to year profits. Unlike profit, the needs keep evolving time after time.
This allows businesses to expand with a strategic plan in place.
While in business, you think within the framework and often land with an expertise in the presentation of the balance sheets. The idea is to make the team members also feel the value, and not only the shareholders or banks, as the latter alone has no durability. We in Tema India felt that pain and learned that lesson. The results have been and will be reflected in progress in the years ahead.
To deepen the process of reflecting on leadership, the following quotes may provide more clarity.
– Leadership is about collaborating and not commanding.
– Leaders emerge, they cannot be recruited.
– A leader emerges from the groundswell around him.
– Leadership is all about going the way and not merely showing the way.
– A captain’s leadership is put to test only on a sinking ship.
– Leadership does not adopt short-sighted policies to succeed.
– The mark of a true leader is his ability to groom his successor.
– Leadership is all about guiding, understanding, and learning with the teammates.
– Leadership is a talent nurtured by hardship, conflict, adversity, and experience. You
cannot get such leadership readymade. One who has emerged from within the
organisation after going through the highs and lows can alone provide the leadership
the organisation requires.
-A CEO, if not an entrepreneur, cannot be a leader because he is governed by the
balance sheet and not by his passions.
– A CEO’s leadership qualities are put to the test only when the company goes
through difficult times. The CEO may have to backtrack for the long term good of the
company. Receding can be a valuable experience, difficult to capture, especially
when it goes through several layers. The more layers it goes through, the more
layers of strength it builds. Therefore, the CEO, as the captain of his company, has a
role to play only when his company is on the down-slide.
– A leader is a person whose talk, enthusiasm, and energy cause others to be
friendly, enthusiastic, and energetic.
– A true leader always considers what his team thinks is right and not his perception
alone.
– A true leader only preaches what he practices.
– A leader should be highly disciplined, and who has risen from the lowest ranks,
rather than a pseudo-elitist.
– To build a like-minded team, the leader must inculcate emotional balancing among
his team members.
– A leader is more effective being a foot soldier rather than a chairman.
– A leader is a person who earns respect by respecting his employees.
– An organisation is not about its leader, but about the team they build.
– A leader’s task is to provide direction, and for that, he needs to sense the flow.
– A leader’s prime task is to make his people resourceful.
– One should be compassionate to be a good leader. It is a misconception that one
should be ruthless to succeed in business.
– As a leader, when you are probing for the truth, you appear confused and
therefore, unconvincing. You need patience and tolerance to deal with contrarian
views to achieve optimum results.
– Even a leader needs handholding. How else would he know what it means to hold
hands?
